World Full of Daughters

Shall we put down the sword of judgment?

Waking near midnight, both arms numb, from a dream of ladders which bad men are climbing.

You find yourself beyond the reach of the body, no longer containable, and yet somehow still local, what does this mean. 

Lilies towering over other flowers.

The lake in which I swim is closed now, the water testing too high for this or that contaminant, and a kind of sorrow enters my heart, and my body grows still and hard, like jerky.

Perhaps all problems are insoluble?

Morning coffee in a different room, why not.

How women talk about you when they love you, how they talk about you when they don't. 

K.'s typos a delicious subtext, the relationship complicating literally before my eyes.

How a certain melody will settle in your mind, move you to tears, lift you over the hard parts even.

I can't say I'm sorry enough apparently, what shall we learn from this.

Faith that things are okay or getting better or will.

Chrisoula broaches the difficult topic of my father's grave, traveling to it, and in her voice I hear his voice, the way he could be patient sometimes, the way he could be clear, oh Christ why is this all so hard.

It was about fragments once, once it was about telling a story, now it's about run-ons.

Waking to gaze down the hallway and see whose light is still on and who has gone to bed: midnight.

Trying to remember the world is full of daughters, trying to remember to be one of the men making the world better for them.

Apples appear at the top of the handful of trees left out back, remnants of a nineteenth century orchard we do not talk enough about.

Imagine Jesus looking at you from the mists of time telling you he would climb on that cross again for you, telling you to give him everything bad so he can give you everything good.

The new therapist is the old therapist and he agrees, who is helping who is no longer an interesting question.

Reading in bed, Rene Girard's Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, wishing I could tell someone who gets it, "my God, my God these sentences."